What Mademoiselle Idalie cared to learn she studied, what she did not
she ignored; and she followed the same simple rule untrammeled in her
eating, drinking, dressing, and comportment generally; and whatever
discipline may have been exercised on the place, either in fact or
fiction, most assuredly none of it, even so much as in a threat,
ever attended her sacred person. When she was just turned sixteen,
Mademoiselle Idalie made up her mind to go into society. Whether she
was beautiful or not, it is hard to say. It is almost impossible
to appreciate properly the beauty of the rich, the very rich. The
unfettered development, the limitless choice of accessories, the
confidence, the self-esteem, the sureness of expression, the
simplicity of purpose, the ease of execution--all these produce a
certain effect of beauty behind which one really cannot get to measure
length of nose, or brilliancy of eye. This much can be said: there was
nothing in her that positively contradicted any assumption of beauty
on her part, or credit of it on the part of others. She was very tall
and very thin with small head, long neck, black eyes, and abundant
straight black hair,--for which her hair-dresser deserved more praise
than she,--good teeth, of course, and a mouth that, even in prayer,
talked nothing but commands; that is about all she had _en fait
d'ornements_, as the modesties say. It may be added that she walked as
if the Reine Sainte Foy plantation extended over the whole earth, and
the soil of it were too vile for her tread. Of course she did not buy
her toilets in New Orleans. Everything was ordered from Paris, and
came as regularly through the custom-house as the modes and robes to
the milliners. She was furnished by a certain house there, just as one
of a royal family would be at the present day. As this had lasted from
her layette up to her sixteenth year, it may be imagined what took
place when she determined to make her début. Then it was literally,
not metaphorically, _carte blanche_, at least so it got to the ears of